Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Life with Fred & Lucy, Part 22: Batty

My cousin Annie, on my mother’s
side, reminded me of an incident with her brother Dennis when he had stayed at
our house. My father was in the hospital recovery from surgery and Mom had
asked her sister, Ann if Dennis could come down and help in the store.

My Aunt Ann had five children,
starting with Dennis the eldest and only boy, Annie, Susie and twins Gracie and
Gladys. I loved whenever my cousins would visit us. We got into a lot of adventures together. They learned about life in the big city and when we visited their home, we experienced the wonderful world of nature. Bugs did not scare my cousins, but we city kids ran for cover.

cousins Gladys, Gracie, Aunt Ann, Susie, Anna with me

My Aunt Ann lived in New Gretna,
New Jersey, and to us city dwellers, this was considered the middle of nowhere,
hick town, and the big scary Pinelands. Goes to show you how much we knew. My mother
was afraid of nature in general so anything not covered in tar and cement was
too wild for her to visit.

Mom would occasionally allow us to
spend a few days with my aunt and cousins at their home, but most of the time, my cousins
visited us. Now that I’m older, I wish we would have visited their home more often,
because I feel we missed out on a lot of fun with our cousins… anyway, my older
cousin, Dennis, spent the week with us, helping my mom run the grocery
store. He also handled the heavy stock boxes and whatever else needed to be done.

It was summer and we slept with the
windows open. We had window screens but, my brother poked holes into most of
the screens. When asked about this, he told my mother that it was a science
experiment. Michael did a lot of science experiments and there were holes in most
of our walls. He loved playing pirate and was looking for gold…he never found
any.

Brother MichaelNow before I go further with this
story, you have to understand that in South Philly during the late 50’s, there weren't that many trees for blocks and blocks. Our version
of wildlife was squirrels, pigeons and the occasional sewer rat scampering
along the curb whenever the streets were dug up for one reason or another. One
night, as my sisters and I were settling in, we heard flapping and squeaking
sounds. What the heck? I switched on the overhead lights and saw this big dark
shape flying around the bedroom. We had never seen anything like it…except in
horror movies. It was a vampire and it was in our bedroom. All hell broke
loose.

My sisters and I began screaming
that a vampire was in our room. My mother, groggy from sleep, realized what it
was and tried to cover our heads. “Don’t let it get in your hair,” mom screamed
as she pulled a pillow case over her head and tried to do the same with us.

Dennis and my brother Michael ran
into our bedroom when they heard the commotion. But, after the initial fright, my
sisters and I pulled off the pillow cases. We watched as Dennis captured
the bat with one of the sheets from our bed. All this time, my mother was still screaming for us to cover our heads.

Dennis finally caught the bat in the sheets,
carried it out the front door and released the poor thing. When he returned to
our bedroom, there was blood on his hand. He had been bitten during the rescue.
My mother cleaned the wound and wrapped the hand in bandages. She never bothered to take
Dennis to the hospital, which I thought was strange.

Needless to say, my siblings and me
believed that Dennis would turn into a vampire because he was bitten. That whole week he stayed with us, I would sneak up on him with a mirror to see if he had a reflection. Jane took to wearing a cross around her neck. Michael hung fresh garlic around his bed, and little Lucy poured holy water into Dennis's soup, waiting to see if he would burst into flames

In the end it all turned out well. Luckily for Cousin Dennis, the bat did not have
rabies and Dennis never became a creature of the night, but... I'm not sure the Bat survived its encounter with the crazy humans living on Porter Street.